Thursday, October 28, 2010

"Hotel Rwanda" Portrays Hero Who Fought Genocide

At the start of the genocide, Rwanda, a nation of six million people, was about 85 percent Hutu and 15 percent Tutsi. The two groups speak the same language and share the same culture.

The primary cause of the conflict, referred to in the film, can be traced back to European colonialism. The Belgian rulers concluded that the tall and thin Tutsis were superior to the short and stocky Hutus, and favored the Tutsis for all positions of power.

Resentment among Hutus gradually built up. At Rwanda's independence in 1962, a Hutu dictatorship took over and further polarized the ethnic state, blaming Tutsis for every crisis.

The genocide was ignited by the death of Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, when his plane was shot down above the Kigali airport on April 6, 1994. Hutu extremist politicians blamed Tutsi rebels for shooting down the plane.

Within hours, the streets filled with Hutu militia known as the Interahamwe, or "those who work together." Spurred on by furious calls for blood by a local radio station, they first killed the Tutsi business and political elite, then turned to ordinary Tutsi citizens.

In weeks the slaughter had spread to much of the Rwandan countryside. Local officials ordered Hutu peasants to kill their Tutsi neighbors. Those Hutus who refused were murdered themselves. At its peak, the genocide claimed 8,000 lives per day, a rate far faster than the Holocaust.

The international community, meanwhile, turned a blind eye toward Rwanda's horrors. Western governments avoided calling the slaughter "genocide." Under the UN Geneva Convention, that would have obliged outside nations to intervene.

To some outside Rwanda, the massacres seemed like an impulsive outburst of ancient tribal hatred, which perhaps partly accounted for the West's reluctance to get involved. In reality, the genocide in Rwanda was precisely planned and executed by one of the most authoritarian states in Africa.

Terry George, Hotel Rwanda's director, is blunt when sharing his opinion about why the outside world deserted Rwanda. "It's simple," he said at a reception after the film's Hollywood screening. "African lives are not seen as valuable as the lives of Europeans or Americans."

Darfur

After the Holocaust, the international community pledged "never again" to allow genocide to take place. But it did happenin Cambodia, the former Yugoslavia, and in Rwanda.

In recent years, leaders of national governments and international institutions have acknowledged their shortcomings in Rwanda. During a visit to Rwanda in 1998, President Clinton apologized for not acting. Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, said he personally could have done more to stop it.

That conflict erupted in February 2003, when black rebels took up arms against what they saw as years of state neglect and discrimination against Sudanese of African origin.

The Arab government, aided by a militia known as the Janjaweed, cracked down on the rebels and their perceived supporters, creating what the UN has described as the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

More than 70,000 people have been killed or have died from hunger and disease in the area, according to the UN, and another 1.5 million people have been displaced.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has said genocide is taking place in Darfur. But so far only an African Union force of 800 troops and 100 observers has been dispatched to the mainly desert region. They are there as peacekeepers and are not allowed to fire their weapons unless in self-defense.

"How far have we really come [since the genocide in Rwanda]?" said Bill Schultz, executive director of Amnesty International USA, who is based in New York. "The Sudanese government has been emboldened by international inaction. They think they can get away with murder, and frankly there's every reason to believe they are right."

Paul Rusesabagina says he understands how easy it is for people to ignore what happens in a war thousands of miles away. As a few people gathered around him after the screening, one woman told Rusesabagina how much she appreciated the film. "I was in my college dorm at the time," she said. "I had no idea this was going on."

Rusesabagina nodded his head. "You can be a messenger," he told the woman. "Now you can tell others what you have seen."